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Advent 4 20 December 2009
Open for Christmas
Outer storms - inner fruitfulness. That's winter, withering the life that walks, swims, climbs, blooms, above the earth, and all the while preparing spring below, growing roots with dreams in them - roots must have dreams, how else can it be that they can make seeds, trees, they must dream of sky, of celestial blue and a hundred shades of green. To survive the storms of winter, every living thing seeks shelter, even dreams, and warmth enough to survive.
Outer storms, inner fruitfulness. That's Christmas, too. Slogging through the storms of Advent -- John the Baptist's warnings of impending disasters and the many storms we are facing in this world -- we make our way toward the sheltering warmth where survival is possible. We learn from the story of Christmas that God needs shelter in order to enter our human world, and that finding that shelter is step in God's coming among us. The survival of the world begins with shelter, so we are told. And Bethlehem, where Mary and Joseph lie down among the animals and find warmth, is one of the names we have for the survival of the world. And another name for that survival is Mary. It was she who first offered shelter to the presence of God, taking God inside herself, where God could rest and grow while hidden from the world, safe in her while she herself became unsafe in the storm....
Now Protestants are, as a rule, pretty uncomfortable around Mary, and the reason, as Harvard Chaplain Peter Gomes has said, is -- we think she's Catholic! Mostly, we Protestants are very uncomfortable with three doctrines the Catholic Church adopted relatively recently, in the 1800s, namely that Mary remained a virgin all her life (not that she conceived while a virgin but that she remained one after Jesus was born; and, that she was born without a normal human capacity for sin, in some kind of genetic isolation from the rest of us, and third, that she didn't die, she was, in her old age, lifted into heaven. None of these doctrines have any Scriptural basis at all. Scripture does tell us Mary conceived spiritually, not physically, making it clear that this child's spirit was not shaped by people or experiences, but was of God. But none of the three doctrines, which are Vatican gibberish all, are Scriptural, and you do not have to wrestle with them or even take them seriously in order to be Christian. In fact, they get in the way of faith, and they obscure far more important aspects about Mary, which Catholic and Orthodox traditions do remember, and we have forgotten.
And the first important memory is that Mary made room, room inside her mind, her heart, and her body, for an unexpected child, and for the Spirit of God, to be sheltered and to grow. It wasn't an easy choice. She took on quite a burden, making herself the subject of unwelcoming speculation by everyone from Joseph, who argued with the angel about her according to Matthew, to you and me, who argue in our own inner space, our hearts and minds, and among each other, about welcoming her.
In making room, Mary was courageously faithful. Her cousin Elizabeth pointed that out, saying "Blessed is she who believed as the Lord has said will be fulfilled!" For generations Israel had been waiting to "see" the Messiah fully grown, to believe by seeing deeds. But Mary, a woman of humble origins from a town so insignificant it was never mentioned in the OT, Mary believed that the Spirit of God could be present in a child she had not even felt stir in her womb.
Mary had what John Wayne called True Grit. This Child is born not just from the Spirit of God, but also from Mary's will. Yes! she says to that angel, I will bear this child, this particular child, and I dedicate myself to be a servant of God in this. She goes on to sing a very subversive song about what all this means, dedicating herself and the child to the God who pulls down the mighty from their thrones, scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts, fills the poor with good things and sends the rich empty away. Whew! Mary is no wimp. And neither is she submissive. The room she is making inside herself is the equivalent of the Underground Railroad, she is a fugitive from the evil powers in this world, an adversary of the storm of oppression that exists around her.
Because of her determination and her dedication, her power of will and spirit, and her decision to open herself, heart, mind, and body, as a sheltering place, she is not just a mother, she is a God-bearer. The Orthodox churches call her theotokas, which means God-bearer. Blessed is she, say the Orthodox, and the Catholics, because of what she did and because of who she was.
But none of this makes her physically unique. And what we miss by ignoring Mary is the Christmas invitation to make room inside ourselves as she did, for God to come into the world in our own time. This is perhaps best expressed by the 13th century mystical writer and monk, Meister Eckhart, "We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us." Meister Eckhart 1260-1328
All kinds of mothers are included in this story. Beginning, perhaps, with Joseph, who is not a father in the usual sense, but takes on a mothering role, protecting and sheltering Mary and her child. So - are you a father? Find yourself here. Are you an unwed or single mother? Look at Mary and know you are at home here. Unwed at conception, she is largely on her own as a parent. After Jesus is 12 there are no more mentions of Joseph, only of Mary. Do you have a blended family? Look at hers! Are you estranged from your family? Mary and Joseph were alone in Egypt for two years, then traveled slowly homeward. Have you adopted? Joseph did. Are there no children in your home? Well, this story is not about fertility, it is about grace, Mary's grace, which the angel addressed in her before she became pregnant. The grace in this story is hers, and does not come from pregnancy, but from her welcome for God, her offering of shelter and nurture.
In more contemporary terms, Dorothy Day, the Founder of the Catholic Worker Movement in New York City in the 1930s, wrote, It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Christ is always asking for room in our hearts.
But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks, with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ.
If Mary had appeared in Bethlehem clothed, as St. John says, with the sun, a crown of twelve stars on her head, and the moon under her feet, then people would have fought to make room for her. But that was not God's way for her, nor is it Christ's way for himself, now when he is disguised in every type of humanity that treads the earth. (Dorothy Day, Selected Writings, ed Robert Ellsberg)
There's hard work ahead, when you open your heart, your life, your self, to make room for God in this world. Each of you knows that - you know that with every experience of love and freedom you have had - you got married, and if you stayed married, by God, you have worked hard to figure out the shelter involved in that, with head, heart, and body. If you had children, you know the joyful birth leads directly into the endless work of relating, understanding, growing and healing that sheltering a child is about. Most of you went to college, a triumph and an experience of arduous transformation - of mind, soul, and body. You walk differently in this world because of the room your made in yourself for the spirit and discipline of learning.
Your fruitfulness is shaped by risks to which you have said yes, the challenging questions someone posed to you, often a stranger: a Dean, a boss, a teacher, a surgeon, sometimes a friend or relation, saying to you, Look here: why don't you try . . . Come on, get off the dime here and get going . . . There's an opportunity . . . and you seem to me to be the right one for this?
You have opened doors inside yourself with a courage only you can describe. You have dedicated yourself to difficult tasks with a will you reached deep to find. You have believed in things before you could see them come to pass. And grace has been in you, with you, in moments when you were reaching beyond the storms, to a blessedness you know within. So this is the Christmas invitation: to make room in your heart for God to be born in our world. Amen.
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